TiVoPlex
By John Seal
April 11, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 04/12/11
8:45 AM Flix
The Violent Ones (1967 USA): An independently produced tale of racial tension in the southwestern United States, The Violent Ones tells the story of three gringos suspected of the rape and murder of a young Hispanic woman. The suspects are drifter Lucas Barnes (David Carradine, nattily attired in a turtleneck), redneck Joe Vorzyk (Aldo Ray, in a grubby tee-shirt), and well-heeled Mike Marain (erstwhile pop star Tommy Sands), and they’re been kept in jail by Sheriff Vega (Fernando Lamas) for their own protection: the locals are in the mood for a necktie party! With a title like The Violent Ones, viewers might understandably be disappointed by this film’s relative dearth of aggro: Lamas (who also directed) overacts terribly and the action seems to consist of little more than scenes of him shouting and/or a truck driving around in circles. On the plus side, Carradine is good, Ray is Ray, and the film — unavailable on home video — is airing in its correct aspect ratio. Also airs at 11:45 AM.
5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
So Evil My Love (1948 GB-USA): A Victorian-era thriller based on a novel by Joseph Shearing (real name: Gabrielle Margaret Vere Long), So Evil My Love provided star Ray Milland the opportunity to make a film in the land of his birth after making his fortune in Hollywood. The result is a marginally above average period piece in which Milland headlines as Mark Bellis, a rascal who takes advantage of widow Olivia Harwood (Ann Todd) when she foolishly invites him to stay in her lodgings (this is not a metaphor). The oily Bellis soon insinuates his way into her life and involves the poor woman in an underhanded plot to blackmail well-off friend Susan Courtney (Geraldine Fitzgerald). You, sir, are a cad! Featuring a terrific array of British character actors, including Martita Hunt, Moira Lister, Hugh Griffith, and Finlay Currie, So Evil My Love was directed by fellow ex-pat Lewis Allen, also newly returned home after many years in Tinseltown.
Wednesday 04/13/11
12:25 AM The Movie Channel
Antonia’s Line (1995 HOL): This one’s a bit hard to describe. Willeke van Ammelrooy plays the title character, a Dutch woman who returns to her village after the end of the Second World War to bury her deceased mother. So far, so straightforward, but when Mom sits up in her coffin and starts singing during the funeral service it becomes quite obvious that this is no ordinary character study! Things stay quirky from there, as Antonia shacks up with a farmer (but only once a week), a character known as Mad Madonna (Catherine ten Bruggencate) expresses her displeasure with Catholic dogma by howling at the moon, and amateur philosopher Crooked Finger (Mil Seghers) bemoans life in general. At times pastoral in tone, at others displaying the influences of magical realism, and at all times cheekily and proudly feminist, Antonia’ s Line won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1996. Also airs at 3:25 AM.
3:45 AM Turner Classic Movies
Blonde Crazy (1931 USA): With a title like Blonde Crazy, how can you go wrong? You can’t, of course — especially when the film is headlined by James Cagney and Joan Blondell! Jimmy is Bert Harris, a wise guy bellhop always on the lookout for new opportunities, whilst Joan is hotel maid Anne Roberts, also eager to improve her situation. The two decide there’s easy pickings to be had amongst some of the hotel’s shadier residents — including bootleggers and adulterers — and soon blackmail their way to a tidy $5,000 nest egg. After moving to the big city, however, Bert and Anne discover they’re just as likely to be the griftee as the grifter. Directed by Roy Del Ruth, Blonde Crazy is as lively and fun an example of pre-Code cinema as you could imagine, and features a great supporting cast, including Nat Pendleton, Maude Eburne, Ray Milland, and Louis Calhern.
Thursday 04/14/11
4:50 AM Encore Action
Tekwar: Teklab (1994 USA): I know you didn’t get enough William Shatner last week, so here’s the Canadian chubby’s immediate sequel to Tekwar. I actually haven’t seen Tekwar: Teklab — which in addition to Captain Kirk also features Michael York — but apparently it’s got something to do with King Arthur’s mythical, magical sword Excalibur. Considering the subject matter of the first Tekwar film, this one might have been more appropriately entitled The Sword in the Stoned.
Friday 04/15/11
4:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
Man of Two Worlds (1934 USA): Are you sitting comfortably? I hope so, because there’s really no reason to get up from the sofa or even change the channel today: indeed, TCM has so many goodies on offer that you may want to keep a chamberpot close at hand. The fun begins with Man of Two Worlds, an obscure RKO drama featuring Francis Lederer as an Eskimo (I know, stifle your disbelief) who falls in love with the picture of the daughter (Elissa Landi) of the great white hunter (Henry Stephenson) with whom he’s been stalking polar bears. Oh dear, oh dear...you know what happens with these cross-racial romances in Golden Age films, right? Let’s just say there’s no fadeout clinch implying future marital bliss. Man of Two Worlds has no IMDb reviews yet, so you know it’s been a while since it last showed up on television!
7:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
Call of the Flesh (1930 USA): Here’s one of those bizarre and creaky early musicals that seemed to be everywhere between 1929 and 1931. It may not be a great film, but Call of the Flesh is worth a look for Ramon Novarro’s performance as hot-blooded Latin opera singer Juan. Hot-blooded senorita Lola (Renee Adoree, not looking terribly well due to a case of tuberculosis) fancies him, but Juan is also the apple of hot-blooded novice nun Maria’s (Dorothy Jordan) eye. Will Maria become a bride of Christ, or will she end up sharing a nuptial bed with Juan? Dios mio! Call of the Flesh is followed at 9:00 AM by The Roadhouse Murder (1932), a routine but rare crime drama in which Jordan plays the girlfriend of a reporter who frames himself for a crime in order to get himself sent to prison, where he hopes to get the scoop of a lifetime. It co-stars both Roscoe Karns and Roscoe Ates, neither of whom packs a roscoe in the film.
3:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
Blind Adventure (1933 USA): Here’s a rip-roaring tale of two-fisted adventure from director Ernest B. Schoedsack, whose previous film had been a little thing entitled King Kong (and whose next would be Son of Kong). The film reunites Schoedsack with Kong star Robert Armstrong, here playing Richard, a moneyed Yank in London who becomes involved with mystery and intrigue when he discovers a dead body in an easy chair. When Richard summons the police to show them the evidence, however, the corpse is gone—replaced by alive and kicking Major Thorne (Henry Stephenson), who naturally has no idea what’s going on. An able supporting cast, including John Miljan, Roland Young, and Helen Mack, lends Blind Adventure the air of a comfy old shoe: there’s nothing here you haven’t seen before, but it’s thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless. And a mite less smelly than your favorite penny loafers.
5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Wooden Horse (1950 GB): Great escapes are tonight’s theme on TCM, though rather surprisingly 1963’s The Great Escape isn’t amongst the offerings! Things kick off with The Wooden Horse, in which British POWs (including Leo Genn and Anthony Steel) plan to break out of their Stalag with the help of a pommel horse. Believe it or not, it’s a true story! It’s followed at 7:00 PM by The Colditz Story (1955), a similar tale based on the real-life exploits of a group of prisoners plotting their departure from the titular "escape-proof" camp, and at 9:00 PM by the best of the bunch, The One That Got Away (1958), a remarkably even-handed account of a captured Luftwaffe pilot’s (Hardy Kruger) efforts to elude his British captors. All three films are worthwhile, but this one’s the pick of the bunch.
Saturday 04/16/11
3:00 AM Fox Movie Channel
Great Guns (1941 USA): Another late period Laurel and Hardy feature pops up this morning, this time on Fox. In Great Guns — their first feature after leaving Hal Roach — the boys join the Army. (As this was only two years before their 4F rejection in Air Raid Wardens, we can only assume something affected their mental or physical health in the interim.) It’s definitely substandard Stan and Ollie with the laughs coming in fits and starts, but there are a few highlights, including a hilarious jeep ride during war games.
7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
In the Money (1958 USA): “Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end, we thought we’d laugh forever and a day.” — Mary Hopkin, whose song Those Were the Days was a nostalgic salute to the onscreen magic woven by Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall
I am sorry to report that we have finally reached the end of the road — or perhaps scraped the bottom of the barrel — with the Bowery Boys franchise. Yes, In the Money is film number 46 of 46, and approximately the 46th film in which the boys have a run in with crooks of some sort. This time, Sach (Hall) is hired by diamond smugglers to escort a gem-encrusted poodle on an ocean voyage. It’s not very good (the film, not the poodle). But happier news! It appears that, as one series sails off into the sunset, another hoves into sight: In the Money is followed at 9:00 AM by Tarzan Escapes (1936), the third of MGM’s Jungle Lord adventures, more of which are scheduled in the weeks ahead. In this outing, Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller, still in pretty good shape though acting no better than usual) is captured by a hunter (John Buckler) who intends to turn him into a circus exhibit. Cheetah ain’t gonna stand for that.
10:10 PM Sundance
Irina Palm (2008 BEL-GER-LUX-GB): I only include this dreadful film, which apparently earned itself a whopping £582 on opening weekend, because it lent its name to an award: the Irina Palm D’or, Britain’s equivalent of the Golden Raspberry. Each year, the folks at http://irinapalmdor.blogspot.com/ nominate the worst British films and worst performances in British films, with the gongs (so to speak) being distributed in December. Irina Palm, the tale of a bridge-player (Marianne Faithfull) trying to raise funds for a lifesaving operation, was widely acknowledged to be the worst Britflick of 2008, whilst 2010’s winner was Gurinder Chadha’s It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, a film I hadn’t even heard of before reading about it at the aforementioned blog. I think it premiered at the Can’t Film Festival, but that may just be an ugly rumor.
Sunday 04/17/11
5:00 PM Flix
The Pawnbroker (1964 USA): Rod Steiger earned a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his performance in Sidney Lumet’s pointed examination of the unhappy lot of a Holocaust survivor. Steiger is Sol Nazerman, a Jewish intellectual who, having survived the camps, relocates to New York City, where he operates a Harlem pawn shop. The store is used as a front by local pimp Rodriguez (Brock Peters), and Sol is understandably bitter about his lot in life: he’s been through so much and now has so little, is haunted by terrible memories, and copes by emotionally shutting down and refusing to engage with those around him. One of the first American films to use the Holocaust as a dramatic device, The Pawnbroker also features some unprecedented and rather surprising nudity.
Monday 04/18/11
2:15 AM More Max
The Bank Dick (1940 USA): If you find yourself in need of some therapeutic laughter after The Pawnbroker, look no further! The Bank Dick, of course, is one of W. C. Fields’ finest features, and stars the pickled one as Egbert Sousè (“accent grave over the e”), a henpecked hubby who lucks into a job as a bank guard and then gets into trouble on a film set. It’s hilarious, almost surreal stuff, with Fields at the top of his game and a marvelous supporting cast, including Cora Witherspoon as Egbert’s harridan of a wife Agatha, Una Merkel as his daughter, Franklin Pangborn as his bank boss, and Shemp Howard as a bartender.
4:20 AM Sundance
Prodigal Sons (2008 USA): Director Kimberly Reed started life as a boy, transitioned to the fair sex as an adult, and returned home to Montana for her high school reunion planning to come out as a transgender woman to her old chums. She intended Prodigal Sons to be a film about her personal journey, but it became something else entirely when she discovered that her older brother, Mark McKerrow, was Orson Welles’ grandson! The result is an utterly fascinating documentary that no one would believe if it weren’t all true.